Power Outage
by Dragonfly8716
Summary: Spam. Established relationship. Oneshot. Written to satisfy my curiosity about what happened to Carly’s mom.


Summary: Spam. Established relationship. Written to satisfy my curiosity about what happened to Carly's mom.

**A/N**: **Sam is 19. Spencer is 31. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly.**

'_Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable,  
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table.  
No one can find the rewind button, boy,  
So cradle your head in your hands,  
And breathe, just breathe,  
Oh breathe, just breathe._

Anna Nalick, "Breathe (2 AM)"

***

Spencer rode up the elevator with a wheelbarrow full of wheels. Before the door opened all the way, he knew he was in trouble. He saw Sam's feet pacing back and forth, then her clenched fists, and finally the furious look on her face.

"Why does the elevator work?" she shouted.

"Well, there's a cable," he said, "and a pulley—"

Sam let loose a scream of rage, then said through clenched teeth, "Why is the electricity in the apartment out, if the rest of the building is fine?"

Spencer took a cautious step towards her. "I would be glad to explain that as soon as you promise not to hit me."

Sam's fists uncurled. "OK."

"Or commit other acts of physical violence—"

"I-promise-not-to-hit-you-or-commit-other-acts-of-physical-violence-against-you," she said in a single breath. "Now, tell me that we are not getting the utilities shut off for late payment."

"I just forgot to set up the direct deposit," he replied. "It's probably too late to fix it today, but I promise I'll do it first thing in the morning."

"You have the money to pay them?" Sam asked, looking directly into his eyes as if she expected to catch him in a lie.

"Yes," he said, meeting her eyes and nodding his head slowly up and down. "When Carly lived here, dad had an account set up. She reminded me that I needed to switch everything over to my account last month. I just forgot. Can I hug you, or are you still ready to hit me?"

She opened her arms. He walked over and wrapped his arms tightly around her. He kissed the top of her head and murmured softly into her hair, "Sorry, Sam. I didn't mean to get you so upset. I'm not your mom. I'll take care of you."

She jerked her head up, nearly smacking him in the chin. Her eyes shone slightly, as if they might be glazed with tears. Spencer patted her arm reassuringly. "What do you say we order Chinese?"

***

Sam and Spencer sat on the couch. The coffee table was littered with white take-out cartons and a small forest of burning candles. Sam had reminded Spencer of his talent for starting fires, but he reasoned that since candles were actually meant to be flammable they were probably perfectly safe.

Spencer looked through the empty cartons. "Have you seen the last egg roll?"

"Ate it."

"Beef broccoli?" he asked.

"Ate it."

"Is there anything left?" he asked hopefully.

Sam peered into the carton in her hand. She held out her chopsticks to him. "Want the last bite of Kung Pao chicken?"

"It's all right," he said, "I was full anyway."

After clearing away the trash, he found Sam stretched out full length on the couch. "Mind if I sit down?" She sat up for a moment, and then settled back with her head in his lap.

"So now what?" she asked.

"I know what we could do," he said with a mischievous look on his face.

"Is that all you ever think about?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"Every seven seconds," he said with a leer.

"Later, OK? I'm way too full right now. Think of something else."

"What about name that scar?" he asked.

"Huh?"

Spencer picked up her hand and ran his finger over a row of fine white lines on the back of her wrist. "Your cousin Harvey was pulling Pudding's tail. She started clawing him. He started screaming. You picked her up by the nape of her neck. She got you with her back claws. Your turn."

Sam took his hand in hers and flipped it over. She pointed to a small circular scar and said, "Nail gun incident."

"Right leg, just above the knee. You were scaling a fence and caught your leg on a jagged piece of metal." He held out his left arm and pointed to two faint crescent shapes. "Remember this one?"

"I bit you." She grinned.

"You were such a monster child," he said fondly. You were maybe ten—"

"Eleven."

"And I wouldn't let you watch some horrible slasher movie because I knew it would give Carly nightmares—"

"And even though I apologized," she said, "you still drove me home and yelled at me the whole way."

"And the next morning I found you curled up asleep in the hallway," he said. "That's when I started to wonder exactly what was going on at your house."

"Nothing you need to worry about," she said firmly.

"I know you won't like me asking this, Sam." He paused to steady his voice, and asked with deliberate calm, "Did any of your mom's boyfriend's try to hurt you?"

"I didn't let them," she said flatly. She reached for his hand, which was balled into a fist. "Relax. Whatever you're imagining is worse than what really happened. OK?"

"OK."

Sam sat up and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Your turn. Have you ever noticed this one before?" She tilted her head towards the candlelight and pointed to her eyebrow.

Spencer shook his head. "I can't see it in this light."

"It's mostly covered. I got hit by a broken bottle in a bar fight." She burst out laughing. "God, I'm kidding! You should see your face. Actually, I met some kid at the park. I bet that I could jump off the swings and land further away than he did. My face landed on a rock, but I won the bet."

"Do you have any more?" she asked.

"Nah." He shakes his head. "I was never a very athletic kid."

"Then tell me about your mom," she demanded.

"I don't talk want to talk about it," he said, looking away.

"Hey, I showed you mine, now show me yours," she said in a wheedling voice.

"Fine." Spencer went to his bedroom and returned with a photo. He handed it to Sam.

She peered at it in the dim light. "Wow. This could be Carly."

"She was eighteen," he said. "That's just after she met my dad."

"What was her name?" Sam asked.

"Melanie. Melanie Carpenter Shay."

"I know she died when Carly was six, so you must have been…?"

"Seventeen. It was the summer after my junior year."

"And she died of some kind of cancer," prompted Sam.

"Ovarian. I don't want to talk about it, Sam."

"Just tell me the good stuff," she insisted.

He was silent for so long that she had almost given up when he started to speak slowly, a sentence or two at a time.

"She was a wonderful cook. She could even make brussel sprouts taste good."

_At the very end, her face was a skull. She had always been slender, but now there was nothing left between bone and skin._

"She was a photographer. Mostly local magazines and baby pictures. She wanted to work for Associated Press or _Time_ or something really big, but Carly and I interrupted her career."

_She was so angry, so pissed off about all the years she wouldn't have. "Listen to me, Spencer. Never hold on to a job or a person you don't love. Never wait 'til later to do what makes you happy." _

"When I was a kid she let me make all sorts of crazy stuff—a robot out of shoeboxes and duct tape, a water balloon catapult, splatter paintings. She let me mix paper maché in her blender."

"_It's a load of bullshit, Spencer. Parents don't love all their children the same. The only thing you can do to atone is to try harder with the one you don't love as much."_

"She always said, 'Nobody's perfect, so do the best you can with what you've got to work with.'"

_The last month, he held her hand endlessly. Just when he thought she was dozing and started to ease his hand out of her grip, she would rasp, "Spence? Don't leave." Even when she got so frail that shifting her position made her wince, she would say, "Hold on tighter. I want to know you're here." The only time she willingly let him go was when the hired nursing aides came in to change her morphine pump and reposition her body to prevent bedsores. The other things they did for her body, he couldn't bear to think about. _

"My earliest memory is at the airport. Dad had probably been transferred to a new base. I must have been really young because I was eye-level with people's knees. I had a meltdown, and Mom told Dad to go away. I don't remember him being mad, so maybe she just asked him to go get the boarding passes or something. Anyway, she sat down on the floor right in the middle of this crowded airport. She sort of stood me between her legs and put her hands on my shoulders to shelter me from all the people walking by. It was like she didn't care what anyone else thought about her. The most important thing in her world at that moment was me."

_The last few days, he wondered if she could even see him. Not that the illness had made her blind. Just that it had taken her someplace very far away._

Sam patted her lap. "Lay down." He laid his head in her lap, and she rubbed his shoulder. He rolled face down, and she continued rubbing his back. A long time later he finally turned his head to breathe. It wasn't until he felt the damp fabric of her pants against his cheek that he realized he was crying.

***

**A/N. Pretty OOC, I think. I've just been wondering what happened to Carly's mom for so long, I don't want to revise it into oblivion. **

**Part of the description is based on my partner's aunt, whom I met five days before she died of liver cancer. She seemed to breathe more easily when I held her hand. There's something magic about human touch. **


End file.
